Jewish Socialist in the Jewish Chronicle

David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has a letter in the Jewish Chronicle today worrying out loud about the impact of Linda Grant withdrawing from the British Shalom Salaam Trust and Jews for Justice for Palestinians. Here's Linda Grant's letter in last week's JC:

Nameless

Last year Norman Geras and I removed our names from the list of signatories to Jews for Justice for Palestinians. I remained as a patron of its charitable arm, the British Shalom Salaam Trust in respect of the work it was doing. Having read JfJfP's statement on the Hizbollah-Israel war, I have now asked for my name to be removed as a patron of BSST.

The mere fact that this zionist fiction writer had to ask for her name to be removed should set alarm bells ringing about the nature of the Trust but here's comrade Rosenberg:

Good grief [I think they meant "good riddance!"]

So Linda Grant uses your letters page to announce to the world that she no longer wants to be a patron of the British Shalom Salaam Trust in protest at a statement by Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP).

Gosh! What will the trust and, JFJFP or the Palestinian people in general do without Linda Grant's support?

Will they ever recover?

Er, yes, I think they might.

David Rosenberg

I must say I find this whole Lebanon debacle fascinating. At first it smoked out just about the whole of the zionist movement who rushed to support Israel. AB Yehoshua, David Grossman and Amos Oz all went on record to support the onslaught before seeing it go pear-shaped and then very publicly changed their independent minds. But it's more complex in the diaspora so other zionist "peaceniks" are having to distance themselves from this or that "peace" group because they feel a need to be counted with their more openly zionist cohorts during Israel's time of "trial" (if only).

What happened here is the zionist belief in Israel's invincibility kicked in and the zionists expected a quick victory followed by a relentless campaign of media lies justifying Israel's atrocities. I was surprised by the lack of media campaigning for Israel while the bombardment was on but it's often the case that zionist media campaigns only kick in after the events they misrepresent. This happened with Barak's generous offer. It even happened in 1967. But this time Israel lost the war. It's hard now for zionists to know which lie to tell. Remember the first one they tried was about the "existential threat" to Israel. They shouldn't have led with such an implausible lie really because Israel lost and yet it still exists. So now they need new lies. Meanwhile, those outside Israel who support Jewish supremacy in Palestine have to risk alienating their cohorts in the openly zionist movement by continuing a pretence of peace-seeking. Or they have to jump back to the overt zionist camp. Linda Grant has chosen the latter course. At least it's honest.